From a ‘Adventures of Chester’ a conservative ex-Marine, who doesn’t appear to have a larger axe to grind.
This still leaves the question unanswered as to who is right bout Iraq, Rummy or the generals? We believe both. In fact, the most cogent part of Friedman’s analysis above is that Rumsfeld has misjudged the pace of “transformation.”
What do we think of transformation? Well . . . that is a big question. Assuming that you mean Rummy’s version of it (there are several versions, many contradictory), we agree with him that information technology can make the armed forces dramatically better at killing people and destroying things on the battlefield, and that this will mean a smaller, lighter, faster force can do much the same as the larger forces of yesterday.
But at the same time, we can’t help but think that we mustn’t think that war will become a standoff, sterile activity, conducted by computers, robots, and UAVs. Man makes war and man will always have an integral role to play not only in its conception, but in its execution as well.
He doesn’t serve us a conclusion yet, but he sets an interesting table.
I’ll be watching to see what he says next, and you should, too.
Looking forward to the rest of Chester’s series.
On a related topic, here’s some interesting background if anyone out there is curious as to “why Sen. McCain (R-Az) and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld are butting heads these days.”:http://www.washin-gtontimes.com/national/20050110-122435-5478r.htm
Where’s the hate? Where is the foamy red bile?
Er… How can I say this delicately…
Once a Marine, _*always*_ a Marine!
DRK
Interesting points, and yes once a Marine always a Marine, but heck back in 94 the Marines were training for urban combat, and foresaw the unique difficulties and need for tactics.
Such as, use explosives to blow through walls, don’t go out on the streets into kill zones, bring armored vehicles right through houses if you need to to shoot point blank at sniper/machinegun/mortar nests.
This is the stuff that the Army in Europe learned the hard way at places like Aachen, and then forgot.
At the same time, UAVs and UGVs and other stuff was used for room clearing; sniffing out booby traps, etc.
No question the military needs restructuring; but neither Rummy nor Bush want to spend political capital to do it since it will cause a lot of military pork to end.
Interesting points about the Pentagon during Clinton’s time. It explains a lot. Particularly the opposition to Rummy.
There are plenty of troops, there is a huge population base right on the spot to supply all the troops that could be needed. The need is for lots of troops that will fight loyally and effectively.
Is it that America needs drastically more troops in Iraq? Or is it that Iraqis drastically need to fight if they want to keep their country and have democracy? Who has the strong position, and who is needy and therefore weak?
If it is America, not Iraq that has needs, the war will be lost. “We broke it, we have to fix it” is exactly the wrong attitude on multiple levels.
If it is Iraq, not America, that has needs and is fully responsible for meeting those needs, the war can be won, easily.
If Iraqis had cultural factors that favoured freedom and democracy, this war would be over already. Well, they don’t. But to concede again that the unavoidable and therefore acceptable terms of conflict include “our gooks don’t fight but theirs do” is to give in.
I don’t care for us to last longer at the price of accepting sure defeat in the long run by conceding that what Iraqis decline to do must be done by Americans, at whatever cost to the Americans, until the political will to keep doing it runs our, which it will soon enough. I would not send any more troops to Iraq, nor would I make preparations to do so.
Also, I agree that our new way of war is flawed, but I do not agree that tech-addiction or the inherent limitations of network-centric warfare are the root of the problem.
Rather, anti-natal societies are fatally flawed in the most obvious sense of “fatally,” and this has all sorts of consequences, including attitudes to war and casualties.
As long as we can’t address our fatal flaw, there is no real solution, but there are better and worse make-do solutions, and by far the best is the Japanese solution: don’t replace your population with hostile aliens, rather, build robots to pick up the slack. This is our solution in war.
Of course, history reveals alternatives, like disarming your native men and out-sourcing violence to unassimilated or pretend-assimilated barbarians. These solutions are much, much worse.
(Oh, and that should have been: “until the political will to keep doing it runs out.”)
Wretchard has done an excellent job of collecting and integrating Chester’s and other comments on the force structure issue.
It’s definitely time to have this debate. Even if we get the Iraqi government and security forces reasonably on their feet in the next 12-18 months, the larger war is far from over. I don’t think it’s productive to initially entangle it with Rumsfeld: 1) He doesn’t have the authority or political capability to make the changes implied by a force upscale or a ‘mobilization mentality’; 2) He’s not going anywhere, and trying to make a strategic discussion contingent on his departure renders it useless.
The politics of this article(Chester) are what is outstanding. Here is the argument the Democrats needed to prove why Bush et al are such feckless commanders. At the same time it forces them to make a choice about what is to be done about the war against the Jihadists because no one can get out of this mess(theatre wise Iraq). The choice is continue with the fecklessness of the current situation(Good news about Iraq and Afghanistan aside) or sign on to a coherent and comprehensive definition of foreign anddefence policy. The back stabbing small p politics of the pentagon by merely opposing base closings and weapons systems continues to hurt them in fact will burying them. The longer they fail to contribute to the solution the more they are part of the failure.
David K. the USMC is not the USMC of WWII, Korea and Viet Nam slugging it out mano a mano until the Army arrives and blows everything to Kingdom come and moves on. Whereever a Marine Expeditionary Regiment shows up they bring the full package infantry, artillery, air power(fixed wing fighters ,ground support and transportation)and all auxillary and support functions. Take a look at one. If Rommel had this…
The Pentagon is not the problem re: base closings. Congress is, because closing bases takes a lot of local spending out of their district/state economy. That’s why base closings will always lag behind a shrinking military.
Nor is it the Pentagon’s job to provide a comprehensive definition of foreign and defense policy, unless I missed a military coup in the USA last week. Their job is to take that definition of policy, or the nearest thing the U.S. democratic system can produce, then:
* Send in their requests for the gear and funds needed to do that job.
* Handle the doctrine, training, leadership, and deployment of those people and their equipment when called upon.
Forget “small p politics”… I’d say the whole orientation of that Robert M’s comment is closer to Big P partisanship over a drive to understand and have real solutions in hand that would be credible. Better questions might include:
* Why is the U.S. military shrinking, despite comparable spending levels over time?
* Is that always a good thing, or is this a symptom of larger problems in some cases?
* If the latter, how can we bring the system back into balance with strategic needs?
But that’s the difference between seeing a policy argument as a way to ‘get’ somebody, vs. seeing a real problem out there deserving of fixes that work.
Chester gets that distinction. Read his post again and you’ll see that what he has is a pretty nuanced case covering some of the issues in question, Rumsfeld’s logic, and alternative views. This isn’t what the definitive case against Rumsfeld looks like, but it is what intelligent engagement with the issues looks like.
As recently as 20 years ago, Democrats had public figures with the background, in-depth understanding and earned respect to be part of these debates and make intelligent contributions. Not any more, for reasons that “high-level Democrats have pointed out before…”:http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0211.hurlburt.html and the thrust of Robert M’s comment indicates why they’re not likely to have that any time soon, either.
Marc,
I really think Jason, having been “in country”, has a pretty good refutation of both Kagan’s Weekly Standard weakly reasoned article, and a number of points raised by “Chester”.
Mike Daley
http://iraqnow.blogspot.com/2005/01/boots-on-ground.html
“Why is the U.S. military shrinking, despite comparable spending levels over time?”
I don’t know, and I think it would be hard to provide a convincing answer.
The armed forces have to do their jobs on what amounts to secret casualty budgets. If casualties exceed an unknown and unknowable amount, you have lost, big time. (Mogadishu 1993.) Everything depends on doing your job within a number that may not even exist within a politician’s mind till he (or she) reacts to an unexpected situation. So, are these secret potential casualty budgets getting more stringent over time, more generous, or what? We can’t know this. Officers are blind limbo dancers, striving to get below a bar they can’t see. How does this effect how military reform ideas are evaluated? I don’t know. This is not the sort of situation where motives can be demonstrated and documented beyond a doubt.
I do not think it is a coincidence that heroes are different now. I said well before Iraq II (in other fora) that the new hero was going to be a victim, not a victor. A great hero gets shot down, or gets grounded, or gets hurt. The ideal victim, sorry hero, is female, blonde, pretty and hard-done-by in some way. (Important: this is _not_ a shot at Jessica Lynch, an American soldier for whom I have nothing but high respect.) Artists (in the broad sense) can handle Joan in prison a lot more comfortably than they can handle Joan the artillerist blowing away bold and mighty knights. Actually beating up the enemy seems to earn you roughly nothing.
I believe this has something to do with societies that simply don’t bring enough of their own children alive into the world, something to do with putting women in the meatgrinder, and something to do with militaries that are in a sense defensive-minded and have to reduce casualties (even hostile casualties!) rather than focusing on positive outcomes. I think it has to do with a fundamental reappraisal of sex roles, and also the way the word “cowardice” has dropped out of modern Western discourse on war. But I can’t prove it.
There’s also the abject failure of the competing Soviet model: discipline, ruthlessness, acceptable performance according to norms, and lots and lots of quantity. Afghanistan found out the Soviet Union about as badly as possible. Why and how is a huge topic, and personally I stress the catastrophic non-application of “preservation of the combat effectiveness of friendly forces” particularly regarding disease. But anyway, the Soviet model utterly failed. It seems there is no cheap way to keep modern, culturally Western soldiers at even a minimally acceptable level of performance. There is a fixed, high and rising cost for soldiers who are culturally Western and can fight – really at all. So it makes sense to pay that price, and a bit more so they fight very well, and a bit more so they can work skilfully with the machines that increasingly have to replace their overly costly former comrades.
I suggest Mr Katzman re-read both the Adventures of ChesterAofC) and my post carefully. This whole issue is big “P” politics. Big “P” meams actions by political powers to render policy and act like statesman. That is to solve the problem at hand. Small “p” politics is that nasty business of getting a bill passed generally agreed to mean making sausage(pork).
While I took measured criticism at this administration in regards to policies I disagree with, the purpose of saying it was the politics that was interesting was twofold. It was not, however to trivialize and digress from the issue by suggesting the Pentagon plan a coup to set policy(I will say that they do plan scenarios based on comprehensive policies given the them by OUR civilian leadership). The purpose of discussing the politics of it was twofold.
One, on a policy level the execution of the campaign in Iraq was and continues to be feckless on the part of the Administration in general and Rumsfield, specifically. AofC goes to the heart of the matter when he says “Where he(Rumsfield) made his mistake, in my opinion, was in not recognizing that the oocupation of Iraq required substantial manpower and much of that manpower was in the reserves.” He goes on, “Rumsfield made three mistakes. First, he overestimatedthe breadth and depth ofthe revoltion in warefare. Second, he underestimated the challenges posed, by counterinsurgency operations, particulary in urban areas. Mistakes are inevitable, but the third mistake was AMAZING: he could not recognize that he had made the first two mistakes. THAT MEANT THAT HE _NEVER_ CORRECTED ANY OF THE MISTAKES.
If you ask members of your staff whom have served in the military officiers have been court martialed for this. The charge is not being situationally aware. This is the grounds for my charge of fecklessness.
It was compounded on the political side by such famous statements as(paraphrased) We will be welcomed with open arms and you go to war with the army you have. All show a deep ignorance of what the potential situation could be and the contempt he had for veteran military commanders.
Two, the point of big “P” politics for the Democrats was now that you’ve got your pound of flesh they must ” sign on to a coherent and comprehensive definition of foreign and defence policy….The longer they (Democrats) _FAIL_ to CONTRIBUTE to the solution the more they are part of the FAILURE(By failure I mean(t) those failures of Rumsfields making in Iraq as well as the transformation). This is a call to sign on to a foreign and defence policy by defining it either alone by commission and ending the one of ommission by merely being (so many mistakes have been made words fail me here).
Small “p” politics matter as well. Backbiting over base closings and weapon systems on the part of the Democrats “continues to hurt in fact will bury them.” AofC specifically mentioned how the Pentagon evolved into an organization that supported Congress via Midge Decter’s book on Rumsfield, “One of the reasons for this was that over the _years_,and to a truly marked degree during the _Clinton Administration_, Congress had in effect replaced the executive branch in the job of looking after the Pentagon. There were now hundreds of people working in the building whose only role was to serve the members of Congress” answering their inquiries, tending to their interests, and doing them favors.” If Democrats kept this up especially with our soldiers under fire, “they are part of the failure” and would be seen as more petulant. As a practical matter they were going to lose over these issues by the current compostion of Congress.
If you think this is partisanship and the Democrats take the fecklessness of Rumsfield specifically to sign on to a realpolitik set of foreign and defence policies I’ll take it. I believe most of the country would too